Levine looked up sharply. “Oh?”
“Yes. For some reason, there’s been a lot of interest in these animals.”
“What sort of interest?” Levine said, as casually as he could.
“Last fall, the government issued a permit to a team of botanists from Berkeley to do an aerial survey of the jungle canopy in the central highlands. The survey had been going on for a month when a dispute arose a bill for aviation fuel, or something like that. Anyway, a bureaucrat in San José called Berkeley to complain. And Berkeley said they’d never heard of this survey team. Meantime, the team fled the country.”
“So nobody knows who they really were?”
“No’. Then last winter, a couple of Swiss geologists showed up to collect gas samples from offshore islands, as part of a study, they said, of volcanic activity in Central America. The offshore islands are all volcanic, and most of them are still active to some degree, so it seemed like a reasonable request. But it turned out the ‘geologists’ really worked for an American genetics company called Biosyn, and they were looking for, uh, large animals on the islands.”
“Why would a biotech company be interested?” Levine said. “it makes no sense.”
“Maybe not to you and me,” Guitierrez said, “but Biosyn’s got a particularly unsavory reputation. Their head of research is a guy named Lewis Dodgson.”
“Oh yeah,” Levine said. “I know. He’s the guy who ran that rabies vaccine test in Chile a few years back. The one where they exposed farmers to rabies but didn’t tell them they were doing it.”
“That’s him. He also started test-marketing a genetically engineered potato in supermarkets without telling anybody they were altered. Gave kids low-grade diarrhea; couple of them ended up in the hospital. After that, the company had to hire George Baselton to fix their image.”
“Seems like everybody hires Baselton,” Levine said,
Guitierrez shrugged. “The big-name university professors consult, these days. It’s part of the deal. And Baselton is Regis Professor of Biology. The company needed him to clean up their mess, because Dodgson has a habit of breaking the law. Dodgson has people on his payroll all around the world. Steals other companies’ research, the whole bit. They say Biosyn’s the only genetics company with more lawyers than scientists.”
“And why were they interested in Costa Rica?” Levine asked.
Guitierrez shrugged. “I don’t know, but the whole attitude toward research has changed, Richard. It’s very noticeable here. Costa Rica has one of the richest ecologies in the world. Half a million species in twelve distinct environmental habitats. Five percent of all the species on the planet are represented here. This country has been a biological research center for years, and I can tell you, things have changed. In the old days, the people who came here were dedicated scientists with a passion to learn about something for its own sake-howler monkeys, or polistine wasps, or the sombrilla plant. These people had chosen their field because they cared about it. They certainly weren’t going to get rich. But now, everything in the biosphere is potentially valuable. Nobody knows where the next drug is coming from, so drug companies fund all sorts of research. Maybe a bird egg has a protein that makes it waterproof. Maybe a spider produces a peptide that inhibits blood clotting. Maybe the waxy surface of a fern contains a painkiller. It happens often enough that attitudes toward research have changed. People aren’t studying the natural world any more, they’re mining it. It’s a looter mentality. Anything new or unknown is automatically of interest, because it might have value. It might be worth a fortune.”
Guitierrez drained his beer. “The world,” he said, is turned upside down. And the fact is that a lot of people want to know what these aberrant animals represent – and where they come from.”
The loudspeaker called Levine’s flight. Both men stood up from the table. Guiitierrez said, “You’ll keep all this to yourself? I mean, what you saw today.”
“To be quite honest,” Levine said, “I don’t know what I saw today. It could have been anything.”
Guitierrez grinned. “Safe flight, Richard.”
“Take care, Marty.”
Departure
His backpack slung over his shoulder, Levine walked toward the departure lounge. He turned to wave goodbye to Guitierrez, but his friend was already heading out the door, raising his arm to wave for a taxi. Levine shrugged, turned back.